Every time an infant does any action such as holding a bottle or learning to turn over, they are learning more about their bodies and how it relates to them and their environment (Encarta). Piaget maintains that there are six sub-stages in the sensorimotor stage although children pass through three major achievements. In the preoperational stage, from a!.
ges 2 to 7, the child is preoccupied with verbal skills. At this point the child can name objects and reason intuitively. Piaget has divided this stage into the preoperational phase and the intuitive phase. In the preoperational phase children use language and try to make sense of the world but have a much less sophisticated mode of thought than adults (Piaget, 1985). They need to test thoughts with reality on a daily basis and do not appear to be able to learn from generalizations made by adults. In the intuitive phase the child slowly moves away from drawing conclusions based solely on concrete experiences with objects (Piaget, 1985). However, the conclusions drawn are based on rather vague impressions and perceptual judgments. It becomes possible to carry on a conversation with a child. Children develop the ability to classify objects on the basis of different criteria. At this stage children learn to count and use the concept of numbers. In the concrete operationa!.
l stage, from ages 7 to 12, the child begins to deal with abstract concepts such as numbers and relationships (Piaget, 1985). It is here that children learn mastery of classes, relations, numbers and how to reason (Klausmeier, 1980). In this stage a person can do mental operations but only with real concrete objects, events or situations. Logical reasons are understood. For example, a concrete operational person can understand the need to go to bed early when it is necessary to rise early the next morning. A pre-operational child, on the other hand, does not understand this logic and substitutes the psychological reason, "I want to stay up".